Sunset Point: A Shelter Bay Novel

by JoAnn Ross

  The bloodhound was back. Even more depressed than ever. “Maybe once your caseload clears up a bit?”

  “Maybe,” she echoed, not wanting to encourage him but not having the heart to turn him down flat after the day he’d had. They’d had two dinner dates last year, and although he was a cute enough guy, in a conservative, just-stepped-out-of-a-Ralph-Lauren-ad preppy way, she hadn’t felt a single spark.

  They continued on their separate ways—Eric trudging back to the office, Tess racing toward the doorway leading to the stairs. She was nearly there when a fiftyish man called to her from down the hall. “I heard you were headed down the coast,” Jake Carter said when he caught up with her. “Alone.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she assured him.

  “You’ve received threats.” Pewter brows dove toward a nose that had been broken more than once. If faces were maps of people’s lives, Jake’s revealed a rough and rocky road.

  “That comes with the territory.”

  “Tell that to Martin Phelps,” he retorted. “Oh. Wait.” He held up a beefy hand. “You can’t. Because the guy’s dead.”

  Martin Phelps had been a deputy district attorney in Salem who’d disappeared two weeks ago after leaving the office to interview a witness in a trial of a dealer who belonged to a Russian mob whose kingpin Tess had helped convict. After an intensive search, his body was finally found in a heavily wooded area off I-5 by hikers.

  “That was tragic,” she allowed. Even more so, given that Phelps had left behind a wife and two children. “But I’m never going to allow anyone to make me afraid of shadows again.”

  It was the truth, but she realized she’d hit a nerve when his neck above the shirt collar flushed red. “I’m sorry, Jake.”

  She put a hand on the sleeve of his navy blue sport coat, which like the rest of Jake’s clothing, always seemed to rumple the moment he put it on. A bit like Columbo’s raincoat. It humanized him in a way that she suspected made leery potential witnesses more willing to talk with him.

  He scrubbed a hand over the buzz cut he’d had as long as she’d known him. “I screwed the damn pooch on your case back then.”

  Jake had been Yamhill County sheriff when eight-year-old Tess had been kidnapped walking back to her maternal grandparents’ house after having attended a friend’s sleepover party. At the time, in the small Oregon wine country where everyone knew everyone else, no one ever locked a door. Evil was something for Sunday sermons, bad guys only skulked the streets of cities, and boogeymen were limited to horror novels and movies.

  Until that day Tess’s kidnapper had single-handedly destroyed the close-knit community’s innocence.

  Although Jake and her dad, working together, had found her hidden in a room beneath the floor of a cabin in the hills, Tess knew Jake was still carrying around a boatload of guilt for having taken two long weeks to locate her. Weeks that must have seemed like an eternity to her family and all those professional and volunteer searchers.

  Not that she’d been all that aware of the passing of time, due to the memory-stealing drugs the doctors later determined the kidnappers had used to keep her quiet and semi-conscious. Drugs that included the compound more recently used in date rapes Tess had prosecuted.

  After her rescue, burdened down by that guilt that followed him around like a dark cloud, Jake had gone into a tailspin, suffering depression and alcoholism, which had led to a messy divorce. He’d ultimately chosen to retire rather than run for an election that, by then, he couldn’t have possibly won, only to discover that having nothing to do but fish only allowed more time to drink.

  Refusing to give up on the man who’d become a friend, Mike Brown had convinced Jake to get help, and although the former sheriff considered therapy too touchy-feely for comfort, he had joined AA, sobered up, and moved across the border to Washington State, where he’d worked his way through the twelve steps and landed a job as a fugitive recovery agent working for a Vancouver bail bondsman.

  Two years ago, having cleaned up his act and seeming to have, if not vanquished, at least quieted his demons, he’d driven back across the Columbia River and gone to work in the Multnomah County district attorney’s office. Which had united victim and rescuer yet again.

  “You found me,” she reminded him now, not for the first time. Feeling the pressure of time, she resisted just cutting him off rather than have this conversation they’d had too many times before. “I don’t remember much about what happened, but I do remember you and Dad breaking down the door and rescuing me, just like the prince chopping his way through those briars to rescue Sleeping Beauty.”

  Back in those days, Tess had believed in fairy tales. Life had taught her that happily-ever-afters were far more difficult to come by than in fiction.

  Jake’s cigarette-roughened laugh at her claim held more regret than humor. “Some prince I was, with my rusty armor. Your dad’s, on the other hand, has never been anything but blindingly bright.”

  “He’s a great man,” she agreed. “As are you.”

  “That second part’s a major exaggeration. Besides, you’re prejudiced.”

  “You bet I am.” If they hadn’t been in a public building, she would have kissed his cheek.

  His gray eyes held seeds of concern. “I worry about you, kid.”

  “I know.” Tess realized that although she’d grown up, a part of Jake would continue to think of her as eight years old. She’d also decided that continuing to put bad guys away was his way of trying to make up for not having found her that first day she’d disappeared. For letting the kidnapper escape. On a good day Tess could avoid thinking about that man out there somewhere, undoubtedly committing more crimes. Jake, she sensed, had not managed that.

  “I’ll be fine,” she assured him yet again. “Shelter Bay’s pretty much crime-free.”

  “So was Yamhill County once upon a time…I don’t suppose you’d call me when you get there?”

  “Sorry. That would be a no.” She shook her head and opened the door to the stairwell. Despite her refusal to allow anyone, including this man she loved, to treat her like a victim, lingering claustrophobia had her avoiding elevators whenever possible.

  “The apple sure as hell didn’t fall far from the damn tree,” he muttered with a swipe of his hand down his ruddy, haggard face. “You’re as stubborn as your old man.”

  She laughed in an attempt to ease his frustration. “I’m going to take that as a compliment.” She left him looking as frustrated as she’d ever seen him.

  As she walked out the stairwell into the building’s lobby, Tess knew that just as Jake was still trying to prove himself after not catching her kidnapper, she needed to make her father proud of her. Not that he’d ever been anything but totally supportive and encouraging, but she’d overheard stories of how Detective Sergeant Mike Brown had been tapped for commander. And how, when she’d been a freshman in high school, there’d even been talk of him being promoted to chief of police.

  Whenever she’d asked him about those lost opportunities, he’d always profess to be happy and satisfied where he was. Then claim that he wasn’t cut out for the politics and publicity that came with those higher rungs on the PPB ladder.

  Which might have been true. But Tess knew that Mike Brown would’ve been the best chief of police Portland would ever have. If he hadn’t taken on the responsibilities that came with being a single father.

  Her mother leaving had not just changed her life. It had also changed his. In so many ways that Tess had always believed that she’d gotten the better end of the deal.

  3

  Once she was finally on her way down the Pacific Coast Highway to Shelter Bay, a quaint coastal community two hours southwest of Portland, Tess promised herself, yet again, that the moment the Schiff trial was over and that sleazy bigamist was finally behind bars, she was going to take an entire week and go somewhere.

  Mexico, perhaps. Or Hawaii, where most of the Pacific Northwest sun lovers escaped to.

  It didn�
��t really matter. Just as long as the tropical sun shone, the pristine beaches sparkled like diamonds, the sea was warm and inviting, and no one knew, or cared, what she did for a living.

  Tess had been a deputy district attorney for five years. During that time, she’d discovered that the world seemed to be divided into two groups. One comprised of individuals who, upon hearing what she did, looked guilty, as if they expected her to read their minds, know every petty offense they might have committed, drag them into court, and prosecute them straight to the big house for jaywalking or parking fines.

  The other group appeared fascinated by her work and wanted her to reveal the “inside scoop” on her most gruesome or violent cases. She suspected that these were the same people who kept those true crime TV shows in business. Those were the times when she was grateful that her kidnapping had occurred before these days of a twenty-four-hour news cycle and nonstop social media.

  The only people who didn’t fall into either the intimidation or fascination categories were the people she worked with. Unfortunately, conversations centered on crime tended to be limiting. Which was why she’d been so grateful when Alexis had arrived in the office two years ago, chucking a position at a prestigious law firm in exchange for the unceasing workload and peon’s wages of a deputy district attorney.

  It was as if they’d known each other all their lives and next summer Tess was going to be the maid of honor at Alexis’s marriage to Matthew Miller, a Portland attorney.

  As the sun lowered over the Pacific Ocean on her right, turning the water to spun gold, Tess’s mind drifted to the travel brochure for Orchid Island Alexis had shown her. Donovan—who’d visited the island with a friend who’d grown up there—had recommended it as a perfect honeymoon location. With its swaying palm trees, turquoise water, and spun sugar sand, the island looked like everyone’s Pacific fantasy paradise. She was going to have to investigate Orchid Island further. As soon as she had time.

  * * *

  Damn.

  Nate rocked back in his chair and glared at the computer screen. He’d been writing for hours, and nothing was working. At this rate, he’d have to pitch the entire mess out and begin again.

  It shouldn’t be that difficult. All he had to do was fill three hundred-plus manuscript pages with scenes of spine-tingling horror. He’d succeeded before. Six best-selling novels in the past four years proved that his loyal readers found him to have mastered the art of infusing terror into what appeared to be a perfectly normal setting. Six novels, and not one of them, not even the first, had given him as much difficulty as this one.

  As he reread the lines of dreck on the screen, Nate couldn’t help worrying that his problem was that he’d run out of stories to tell. Fears to unleash. Secret, forbidden doors to open.

  “Blast,” he muttered, borrowing a salty, archaic curse from the captain as he got up from the desk.

  Throwing in the towel for now, he retrieved a beer from the small office fridge and walked over to the large bay windows overlooking the sea. The tide was coming in, the water tinted brilliant shades of crimson, lemon and purple by the setting sun. On the horizon a fishing boat rode at anchor, and Nate imagined he could hear the water faintly slapping against the boat’s sides.

  Under normal conditions, the ever-changing panorama of the Pacific Ocean soothed him, cleared his mind, and calmed his senses. But not today. Nate was unreasonably edgy. The disquieting feeling that had settled upon him during his sleep had escalated during the day.

  “It’s only a dream,” he reassured himself aloud.

  He shook his head as he took a long pull from the bottle. It might be only a dream, but damn, it was messing up his mind. Usually he thrived on his work, racing with zest, even joy, toward each new horror. Lately it was all he could do to grind out five pages a day. It was as if, after six successes, his muse had suddenly deserted him.

  Nate cursed. That wasn’t it. The muse who used to perch on his shoulder, whispering words into his ear, hadn’t left of her own free will. It was more as if the woman in the dream had chased her away.

  “Who the hell is she?”

  It was a rhetorical question, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow MacGrath was involved. It struck Nate as strangely coincidental that he’d begun dreaming of his mystery woman shortly after the seafaring ghost had begun materializing with increasing frequency.

  He waited for an answer of some sort, but the only sound he heard was the scraping of a Douglas fir tree branch against the side of the house as the ocean wind picked up.

  “Not talking, huh?” he said, knowing instinctively that he wasn’t alone. The temperature in the room had suddenly dropped dramatically.

  “I can feel your sly hand in this, Captain. So why don’t you quit being so damn coy and spill the beans so I can get on with my work?”

  Nothing. The room, in the lengthening shadows of dusk, was as still as a tomb.

  “You’re a stubborn old bastard,” Nate muttered with unconcealed frustration. “But you haven’t licked me yet. I’ll figure it out sooner or later.”

  Hopefully it would be sooner. Too many more days like today and he’d be forced to go out and find a real job rather than living his dream of getting paid to tell stories.

  Shelter Bay was far from a bustling metropolis, but even in the cities, employers weren’t exactly lining up to hire former war vets. There was always the fact that the ability to take out a terrorist at one thousand yards with an M40 Marine scout sniper rifle wasn’t a skill that translated well to civilian life. Unless he wanted to try to sign on to a police SWAT team, which, after what he’d seen and done, wasn’t an option.

  As he polished off the beer, Nate decided that what he needed was a change of scenery. Sitting in the dark talking to ghosts while drinking alone damn sure wasn’t going to solve any of his problems.

  He could drive into town. Stop into Bon Temps for some Dungeness crab jambalaya, walk along the waterfront, and if he was lucky, spot some whales.

  Spending a few hours among real live people was probably all he needed. He sure as hell wasn’t getting anything accomplished here.

  4

  When she reached Shelter Bay, Tess dropped into the sheriff’s office as a courtesy call. She’d met Kara Douchett a few years ago when a Portland wife abuser she was prosecuting had jumped bail, foolishly thinking that he could hide out in this small town where everyone knew everyone else. As their paths had occasionally crossed from time to time, they’d become friends.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said.

  “No problem, I’m just clearing up some paperwork. A bunch of high school football players must have bought the town out of toilet paper before committing mayhem on several trees on Eagle Crest Drive. Fortunately, they were caught red-handed when one of them fell out of a tree and broke his ankle.”

  “I’ll bet they got in more trouble with their parents and coach than they did with you,” Tess guessed.

  “You’d win that bet.” Kara rolled her chair back from her desk, stood up, and rubbed the back of her neck. Tess had often thought that, despite the khaki uniform and ugly black cop shoes, with her slender curves, red hair cut in a sleek, sassy bob, and expressive brown eyes, whoever was in charge of such things should put her on a recruiting poster for law enforcement. “I’m going with you.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “You know, I really admire independence, having a fair share of it myself. But you don’t always have to play Lone Ranger. Shelter Bay’s my town. It’s my job to protect and serve the people who live here. Besides, I saw Dana in the market the other day, and the way she suddenly ducked behind a display tower of tomato sauce, I got the feeling she’s avoiding me.”

  “Because she’s dragging her feet,” Tess said.

  “Yeah. I figured she didn’t want to discuss it. Not that I would say anything about the case in public, but it’s got to be upsetting for her.” Which was an understatement.

  “At least she di
dn’t change her name when she thought she was becoming Schiff’s legal and only wife,” Tess said.

  “Her daughter had already been through enough with her father dying. Dana didn’t want to leave Laura the only White in the family. I suspect it was also because she worried about hurting Bill’s parents. Also, perhaps, deep down, she wasn’t truly ready to remarry. Word around town is that Schiff pretty much breezed into our little coastal burg with his big city ways, and swept her off her feet.”

  “He seems to have a way of doing that,” Tess said dryly, thinking of all the women she’d met that had been taken in by the bigamist. And others she might never know about.

  “We can always do a soft double-team on her,” Kara suggested. “We’ll take your car so she won’t have any additional embarrassment of explaining my cruiser outside her store. Then we’ll calmly, reasonably convince her to see the light.” She grinned as if Tess’s agreeing was a foregone conclusion. “And then we’ll celebrate afterwards with cupcakes at Take the Cake.”

  “I’ll bet your confession rate is off the charts,” Tess said with a laugh. “Because you definitely just played to my weakness.”

  Kara laughed as they left the office. “It’s a gift.”

  * * *

  Dana White’s Seaside Serenity Gift Shop on Harborview featured art and crafts from local artisans. A faithful local clientele and a strong seasonal tourism business had supported her and her daughter after her husband’s death five years earlier. A windsock featuring the Shelter Bay lighthouse spun from above nautical blue-and-white awnings, while cheery yellow mums in a planter by the door greeted customers.

  “The only good thing about all this,” Tess said as she parked in front of the white storefront, “is that we caught up with Schiff before he’d bled Dana of every last penny.”

  “There is that,” Kara agreed.

  Dana’s brow furrowed when she saw Kara enter with Tess, but her smile stayed pasted on her face while the final customer of the day stood in front of a display of blown-glass animals, dithering over a choice between a blue dolphin and an orange crab. After the woman’s obviously impatient husband suggested she just buy both so they could go eat the crab cakes he’d been waiting for all day, the shopkeeper rang up the sale, wrapped the items in tissue paper and put them into a box, which she then put into a white bag with the store’s name written in feminine blue script.